universal suffrage and education.
Q:
What is the wardrobe of an
average American woman in the
middle-income group?
A:
Winter coat, spring coat, raincoat,
five house dresses, four afternoon “dressy”
dresses, three suits, three skirts, six blouses,
three sweaters, six slips, two petticoats, five nightgowns,
eight panties, five brassieres, two corsets,
two robes, six pairs of nylon stockings,
two pairs of sports socks, three
pairs of dress gloves, one bathing suit,
three pairs of play shorts, one
pair of slacks, one play suit,
and accessories.11∗
CONGRESSIONAL SUBCOMMITTEE
SEEKS TV QUIZ DATA
Chairman Moves
For Release of Sealed
Jury Presentment
July 31, 1959—The chairman of the Congressional House Legislative Oversight subcommittee, Representative Owen Marcus, Democrat of Arkansas, said yesterday that members of his group would seek copies of the recently impounded grand jury presentment on television quiz shows. Mr. Marcus announced that his subcommittee plans to investigate charges that shows were rigged on a large scale. He said he already has information “leading us to suspect” that certain quiz show contestants were primed “to enhance their audience appeal.”
“If this is true, then the American people have been defrauded on a large scale,” Mr. Marcus said. “It is a matter of intense and paramount Federal interest” that a nation-wide mass communications media not be used to perpetrate “fraudulent advertising schemes on the public,” he said.
The presentment handed up this June 10 by the grand jury had been ordered sealed by Judge Mitchell Schweitzer.
NEWSREEL, AUGUST 1959
[ Fanfare of trumpets ]
UNIVERSAL-INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
NEW DIPLOMACY
Khrushchev to Visit U.S.A.
VOICE: Ed Herlihy
In a special White House conference, President Eisenhower makes official the hints and rumors of a dramatic visit by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev this fall, to further the cause of peace. Ike reads the text of a joint announcement released simultaneously in Moscow.
Eisenhower:
The President of the United States has invited Mister Nikita Khrushchev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, to pay an official visit to the United States in September. Mister Khrushchev has accepted with pleasure. Mister Krushchev will visit Washington for two or three days,and will also spend ten days or so traveling in the United States. He will be able at first hand to see the country, its people, and to acquaint
himself with their life....
HOUSE TV INQUIRY
WILL GET GRAND JURY’S DATA
Aug. 5, 1959—Judge Mitchell Schweitzer directed yesterday that the minutes of a grand jury investigation into the alleged rigging of television quiz shows be turned over to a House subcommittee.
The group that asked to inspect the minutes is the Legislative Oversight subcommittee headed by Representative Owen Marcus, Democrat of Arkansas. Last week the subcommittee announced that it planned to look into charges that shows had been rigged on a large scale.
“The committee seeks the minutes to facilitate the holding of its own hearings and the making of its own findings,” said Judge Schweitzer, in a press conference in his chambers. He added that in reviewing the committee’s supporting affidavit requesting the minutes he felt there was a “note of urgency. And there was a clear showing that the release of this data is in the public interest.”
OPEN HEARING SET
ON TV QUIZ SHOWS
Aug. 6, 1959—The subcommittee of the House of Representatives that will investigate television quiz shows made it clear yesterday that it would bring into the open the complete story of any “scandals” it uncovered.
Robert Lishman, special counsel to the subcommittee, said in Washington that the “entire story of these scandals” must be brought out “if Congress is to ascertain what corrective measures may be needed to prevent a future hoax on the public.”
He also explained that while it would be impossible now to say who would be called to testify, if a hoax had been perpetrated on the public, “a whole cast” of witnesses would be needed to get all the facts on the record.
NEWSREEL, SEPTEMBER 1959
UNITED STATES INFORMATION SERVICE
presents
KHRUSHCHEV’S AMERICAN JOURNEY
VOICE:
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, on his grand tour of the
United States, arrives in Hollywood for a star-studded luncheon at the studios of Twentieth Century Fox. Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor, Charlton Heston, Shirley MacLaine, Gary Cooper, Ginger Rogers, Kirk Douglas, and more of the industry’s brightest join the Premier for a lavish meal. In remarks for the crowd, Khrushchev expresses disappointment that his time in California will not include a visit to Disneyland. The Premier’s disappointment turns to confusion,
and then to anger.
Khrushchev:
Just now I was told I couldn’t go to Disneyland. I asked, why not? What is it, do you have rocket launching pads there? I don’t know! And just listen—just listen to what I was told. We—which means the American authorities—cannot guarantee your security if you go there. What is it, is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the place? [Shouting now] I say, I would very much like to go and see Disneyland! That’s the situation I’m in, your guest. For me, such a situation is inconceivable. [Appearing outraged] I cannot find words to explain this to my people.
VOICE:
Afterward it is off to the sound stage, where Khrushchev
and his party are treated to the filming of a song-and-dance scene from a new production, Can-Can, introduced by Frank Sinatra. Next on Khrushchev’s itinerary, a short jaunt north to San Francisco, where the Premier makes an unexpected stop in one of the country’s newest supermarkets, Quality Foods of Daly City. The Soviet leader inspects capitalism’s potatoes and grapefruit on his tour of the supermarket, while the commotion of his arrival causes one surprised lady shopper to faint. Meanwhile, eager photographers create havoc climbing instant coffee displays, freezer cases, and checkout counters trying to get the perfect photo…
COMMENTATORS
“Khrushchev, a natural ham, instinctively understood this new reality. He recognized that his trip was not just a diplomatic journey; it was an opportunity to put on a TV show starring himself.”
10.
THE CAMERA EYE,
THE CAMERA I:
Fall 1959
“A television-radio system is like a nervous system.
It sorts and distributes information, igniting memories.
It can speed or slow the pulse of society. The impulses it
transmits can stir the juices of emotion, and can
trigger action. As in the case of a central nervous system,
aberrations can deeply disturb the body politic.”
—Erik Barnouw, The Image Empire
LIVING ROOM
Here on the screen is matronly Nina Krushchev in dowdy floral dress and coat, hair barretted, all smiles, as she tours Maryland’s National Institute of Dry Cleaning with her small entourage of Soviet security and a larger entourage of reporters and cameramen.
“She was shown a large room full of moths, where the institute can test out its newest mothballs,” explains the TODAY Show’s Dave Garroway as the footage plays. “She was given a first-hand demonstration of a stain removal technique by this gentlemen here, hard at work on what looks to be a wedding gown. Is that a wedding gown?”
The picture shifts to Garroway, seated at his TODAY Show desk in his trademark tortoise-shell glasses and bow tie and beige jacket, the TODAY Show’s multiple clocks ticking away on the wall behind him. He continues in his easy, friendly, inviting way (he’s just the kind of fellow you wouldn’t mind having to dinner).
“Well, it proved to be an interesting outing for the First Lady of the USSR. Meanwhile, of course, her husband was engaged in informal talks with the President back at Camp David…”
CONTROL
Cut to full shot of the TODAY Show commentators seated side by side along the wide anchor’s desk, adjacent to Garroway. He turns to the group. “The Khrushchev tour has made for quite a packed and interesting week, hasn’t it?”
Pamela Harrison, in the middle seat between Frank Blair and Kenyon Saint Claire, pipes up: “Indeed it has, Dave. I think all the way back to Mister Khrushchev’s arrival at Andrews Air Base on the 15th—it seems like forever ago—and the way he embraced that little girl who brought the flowers out to him, the way he patted her head. Theatrical from the start!”
“He’s quite the performer,” says Garroway. “We’ve learned that much about him this week.”
“He’s the biggest television star there ever was,” says Frank Blair. “I mean, have we ever seen anything like him?”
“He understands the cameras,” says Kenyon Saint Claire. “He knows how to use the medium—how to use television, doesn’t he? I mean, putting his arm around the President in the car from the airport. Upstaging whoever it is that’s making a speech of welcome—”
“Shouting about Disneyland,” says Garroway.
“Exactly.”
“Yes, well, our coverage of the Khrushchev visit, here on TODAY, will continue right to the end…”
KENYON
In a dim rear corner of the TODAY Show studio, Kenyon sits before the mirror at his small dressing table scrubbing off this morning’s makeup. From the mirror’s depths two figures approach.
“Kenny, you should meet Mister Godfrey.”
Kenyon swivels in his seat and there stands Tom Grant, TODAY Show producer, with a short black-haired man at his side. The man extends his hand.
“Daniel Godfrey,” says the man, with a large smile. “Nice to meet you, Mister Saint Claire.”
“Mister Godfrey is here from Washington. From Congress.”
“Not a Congressman,” says Godfrey. “Just working for one. I’m with the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. Representative Owen Marcus, the committee chair, is my employer.”
“I see,” says Kenyon. “I’m afraid I was just getting ready to leave. I have a class. I teach at Columbia.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that. I won’t keep you. But I thought I’d stop and say hello. Since I was in the neighborhood.”
“I apologize,” says Kenyon. “You’ve caught me in an unusually busy week, what with the Khrushchev visit and all. Isn’t that right, Tom? Tom asked me to do some extra appearances this week, in the nature of a commentator.”
“Madness,” says Tom. “A week like we haven’t seen since…”
“Since the birth of television,” says Kenyon.
“It’s been a circus to watch,” says Godfrey. “That’s for sure.”
“What brings you to New York, Mister Godfrey?”
“Oh, a little research. I guess you may have heard about the Congressional investigation—”
“Of the quiz programs. Of course.”
“Listen, do you mind if I—?” Godfrey pulls a stool from the neighboring dressing table. “Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d—the committee’s getting ready for the public hearings, you see.”
“Yes, I’ve heard.”
“And your name is sure to come up. You know, Kenyon Saint Claire’s situation with regard to the quiz program, Kenyon Saint Claire’s consequent notoriety—you understand it’s inevitable.”
“Do you mean I’ll have to testify?”
“Well no, there’s no hard plan to ask you to do so. Not yet.”
“I do appreciate that. I already went before the grand jury—”
“Yes—”
“—so my testimony is on record.”
“Sure. And you see, Mister Marcus feels strongly—if at all possible he wants to avoid laying any undue hardships on those contestants who have already testified, or appearing to single out any one person. He’s a little…deferential that way. He even said to me, we’re not going after Saint Claire. Now, what happens when the hearings start and more information is brought to light and your name inevitably comes up, well, that’s another matter, that could change matters considerably.”
“I see. So you’re here to—”
“To give you a bit of a heads-up, yes. But also, besides to meet you like I said, I thought I could offer you the courtesy of a little information.”
“Oh?”
“Mister Saint Claire, I’m not sure you’d know this, but some time ago there was a development involving Mister Lacky, the producer I think you’re acquainted with—”
“Sure. Sam Lacky.”
“Yes, Samuel Lacky, the quiz program producer. Well, I thought it would interest you to know, Mister Saint Claire, that Mister Lacky went back some time ago—this past spring I believe it was—he went back to the D.A. and changed his testimony.”
Reflexively Kenyon glances up at Tom Grant, still standing there listening.
“Changed his testimony?” says Kenyon, confused.
“Yep. His earlier testimony had gotten him arrested, you’ll remember.”
“Of course. But how do you mean, changed?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t say much here—no more than what I’ve just told you. It’s the role of the subcommittee to bring these things to light during the hearings. But I thought that fact might interest you. Thought I could offer it, you know, as a courtesy to you.”
Godfrey’s meaning is clear. Kenyon is dumbstruck.
Changed his testimony, he thinks, from perjury to …
The opposite of perjury is the truth, he thinks.
A person can change his testimony?
Suddenly in his gut there’s a cold cube of dread—hard-edged, invasive, sharp corners jabbing his lungs. He doesn’t look up again but he knows: above him, looming there, Tom Grant watches his every move.
At a loss, Kenyon turns back to the mirror. “Well. That’s very interesting. When did you say this was?”
“Oh, in the spring. And Lacky, being a producer, being so involved in the course of these television programs, he will testify before the committee.”
“I see.”
So Kenyon’s grand jury testimony is, by implication, void—and will continue to be. And yet the D.A.’s office hasn’t come after him.
There in the mirror is Tom Grant, watching.
Why haven’t they come after Kenyon?
Godfrey rises, slides his stool back to where he found it. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Mister Saint Claire,” he says.
They haven’t come after him because Congress will.
Blindly, numbly, Kenyon says, “Nice to meet you.”
For a moment Godfrey doesn’t move. Instead, with hands in his pockets, he stands watching as Kenyon swabs the last of the makeup from his forehead. Then he says: “That stuff come off as easy as it goes on?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer. His flicks out his card, clicks it down on the dressing table. “Well, maybe I’ll see you in Washington some time.”
Godfrey turns and heads back across the studio, Tom Grant following.
Kenyon watches them disappear in the mirror’s shadows.
SIDNEY
They took forever, these guys and their legal beagle ways with their politics and processes and questions and answers and affidavits and depositions and due diligence and you name it on and
on, which what is all that but splitting hairs really, and which even when you know how long it takes doesn’t make waiting it out any easier.
October the sixth of fifty-nine today. That makes it three years ago Sidney first went public—three years!—but now finally it’s come to this, to Washington and to Sidney appearing in this hot hearing room overpacked with spectators—Sidney sitting at this witness table under all these lights—the photographer’s bulbs flashing and the lights glaring for the TV cameras just like the ones on the quiz show, and sitting here right now Sidney can’t help but think how he’s come full circle. He’s back on television. One more time he’s being broadcast, one more time he’s prompted to answer the questions only this time the questions come from the long wall of Congressmen seated before him and there’s no glass to separate him and this time he’s not here to perform, so to speak, but to perform a public service.
Bernice couldn’t come, they couldn’t bring the baby along and best for her and the baby both to stay home in Forest Hills—but she’ll see him on TV. Sure, he got back on TV after all—and this time he’s himself, Sidney Winfeld, the real one, not some poor schmuck in a bad haircut and oversized jacket—and won’t he make her proud?
They’ve got a screen and projector set up right there, just off to one side, and it’s loaded up and ready to show the kinescopes of his own appearances, his performances in the isolation booth, which Sidney expects he’ll get his chance in the course of testifying to lay out all the ways he’s nothing like that guy they asked him to play for TV.
But this ain’t about him at all. This ain’t about Sidney Winfeld. And he knows this. And it ain’t about what happens on TV even. What it’s about is TV, period. It’s about being on it, being on it by any means possible and playing a part, which that’s exactly what these Congressmen are doing, let’s not kid ourselves, and anyway what was Sidney himself doing all that time except playing the part they asked of him? What was he on the quiz show but a paid stooge in a sense?—a sop to the public at large. Sure, there’s no shame admitting it, but hey, if you’re the very first stooge then are you really a stooge? Which, speaking of first and second stooges, what would that make Saint Claire?
Q & A Page 29
